


Call The Night By Name

by boughofawillowtree



Series: Repossession Recovery [6]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Caring Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Has PTSD (Good Omens), Crowley Whump (Good Omens), Dark Aziraphale (Good Omens), Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eye Trauma, Flashbacks, Hallucinations, Hurt Crowley, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Fanfiction, M/M, Nightmares, Recovery, Repossession, Trauma, but not really - only in dreams/hallucinations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:07:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22788436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boughofawillowtree/pseuds/boughofawillowtree
Summary: One of the coping mechanisms that got Crowley through Gabriel's twisted mind games (during the events ofRepossessioncomes back to haunt him in his dreams. Worried about the impact on Aziraphale, Crowley tries to solve the problem by not sleeping. It does not work.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Repossession Recovery [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1542178
Comments: 15
Kudos: 233
Collections: Repossession Fics, Repossession and Repo-verse Works





	Call The Night By Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamsofspike](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsofspike/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Repossession](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19710115) by [dreamsofspike](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsofspike/pseuds/dreamsofspike). 



> This story does include flashbacks to graphic events from _Repossession_ as well as dreams/hallucinations of Aziraphale hurting Crowley. Please be mindful!
> 
> Thanks to the lovely @dreamsofspike for beta-ing!

_ Crowley is in bed. _

_ It is his bed, but it is not his bed. _

_ It is his bed, and it is not his bed. _

_ Crowley is in bed.  _

_ Curled under the blankets, eyes half-closed, he is not sleeping. _

_ The door opens. Crowley tenses in anticipation, begins to slide his legs out from under the thick covers and onto the floor. _

_ But it is not Gabriel. Not his Master. _

_ Walking through the door, stepping into the room which is his room and which is not his room, is Aziraphale. _

_ Crowley lifts his head, dumb with shock. Aziraphale is beside the bed, looking down at him, reaching out toward him. _

_ “I came for you.”  _

_ Crowley has no words. _

_ “He gave you to me.” _

_ Aziraphale drops a thick stack of papers on the bed next to Crowley. There, in precise and looping script, the angel’s signature, and the manual for the collar Crowley wears. _

_ “You’re mine now.” _

_ Aziraphale’s hands are on Crowley, and for one brief moment, a star-glimmer of an instant, all he knows is joy, relief, and, he thinks, as it slips away from the grasp of his atrophied heart, perhaps something like love. _

_ Then it all collapses, a dying star thundering with fear and confusion and pain. _

_ Aziraphale shoves Crowley down, yanking his hair, slapping his face, and Crowley does not raise his arms, he does not twist away, he only looks up, watches the soft pale hands come down as heavy fists, watches Aziraphale hurt him. _

_ Then Aziraphale climbs into the bed, Aziraphale is on top of him, pulling on his legs, reaching beneath the covers. Crowley is shaking his head, questions filling his throat, choked with confusion, and he sinks under Aziraphale’s weight, pressed against the pillow which is his and which is not his. _

_ Crowley is in bed. _

_ The bed. _

Crowley was in bed.

His bed.

Crowley awoke, blinking groggily as his body slowly reacquainted itself with his surroundings. 

He was in bed, his bed, which he shared with Aziraphale. His Aziraphale. Who, at that moment, was lying in bed next to him, engrossed in a book. He had not noticed Crowley’s waking, and Crowley stayed still, worked to even out his breathing, hoping to keep it that way.

Crowley closed his eyes, willing himself back to sleep. It did not work. Visions of the angel from his dream seemed to throb behind his eyes. Aziraphale, but with Gabriel’s cruelty. The archangel’s violence wrapped in a twisted facade.

Crowley ground his teeth in frustration. It was an awful dream, one he cursed his own mind for conjuring. 

But it hadn’t come from nowhere. No, he had invited it in with open arms. It was his fault, and he knew exactly which weakness of his let such a thing slip into being.

Crowley sighed, disguising it as a sleepy murmur. Aziraphale absentmindedly laid a hand on Crowley’s hip, and he forced himself to relax under it.

Was it any surprise? After all, he was a demon. His sins followed him always.

  


***

  


_ Crowley lay on the rough stone floor of his cell, half conscious, mind hazy. In the darkness, without any distraction offered by his sight, it all seemed to hurt so much more. _

_ Gabriel had left him to suffer like this, his body battered, the collar turned up to a punishingly high level, for what felt like an eternity since his last visit.  _

_ The archangel had grown angrier and angrier as Crowley refused to submit, and eventually resorted to escalating violence, which Crowley knew frustrated his captor. _

_ Gabriel wanted obedience. He wanted Crowley to do the work of subduing himself, without forcing Gabriel to do it. Crowley was uninterested in making anything easy on Gabriel, so he had fought, shouted insults, defied Gabriel’s commands. _

_ And even if he had wanted to, even if the logic of submission - take it, and it won’t get worse - had been convincing, Crowley simply couldn’t. When Gabriel hurt him badly enough, his body moved without even his permission, flinching and fighting and insisting on resistance regardless of Crowley’s intentions. His self-preservation instincts too intense to withstand, he had lashed out, hitting Gabriel square on the chin. _

_ It had not gone well for him, after that. _

_ By the end of it, whatever intention Gabriel had for the session had been as shredded as Crowley’s flesh, and both beings were exhausted. As Crowley lay in a wrecked heap on the floor, Gabriel stood over him, breathing hard enough that Crowley could hear him even over the ringing in his ears. _

_ Gabriel did not like having to exert himself. He did not like having to do anything on Crowley’s account.  _

_ So he left Crowley, as he put it, to consider the demands he had made on Gabriel’s time and energy, and whether he might find it advisable to be more cooperative on the archangel’s next arrival. _

_ And there Crowley had stayed, lost in the darkness, wretched with pain. The waves of agony from the collar prevented him from sleeping, but the state of his body made full consciousness impossible as well. He floated amid dark clouds of pain, grasping at scraps of thought, clinging to memories of Aziraphale, trying to form a plan for Gabriel’s return, until his wrung-out brain refused to cooperate and he could only drift, at the mercy of whatever sensation or image appeared at any moment.  _

_ Someone was in the room. And they sounded, and smelled...familiar. _

_ Crowley lifted his head weakly from the floor. His mind, dazed with pain, instantly registered the familiarity.  _

An angel… a familiar angel… a smell that I know…

Aziraphale?

_ But as he came further into consciousness, he realized that it was not Aziraphale. _

_ The familiarity was, instead, lavender and shoe polish.  _

_ Gabriel. _

_ Crowley let his head fall back down with a choking sob. For one brief instant, Aziraphale had been there, in the cell, with him. Had come for him.  _

_ Gabriel approached Crowley. He could feel the archangel standing over him.  _

_“Are you going to behave today?_ _Or will we have a repeat of last time?”_

_ Crowley swallowed back hateful bile as he remembered Gabriel’s last visit. He knew he had to fortify himself against the urges to escape, the overwhelming need his body had to struggle and fight, if he was going to survive. But how? _

Aziraphale. You thought he was Aziraphale.

You could do it for Aziraphale. 

_ Crowley didn’t want to. Didn’t want to soil the memory of Aziraphale with this twisted fantasy. He couldn’t do that to his angel. _

_ No. He wouldn’t use his most precious memories, his love for Aziraphale, to meet Gabriel’s twisted demands. _

_ But he had to come up with something, and fast, if he was going to survive. _

_ “What’s it gonna be, sweetheart? You planning to fight me again?” _

_ The answer had to be no. He wouldn’t make it through this any other way. Maybe next time, he could fight. Just not now. He was so tired. The echoes of the torture still shuddered in him. He had to find a way to submit. To resist his own impulses to pull away from the pain, to argue with Gabriel’s degradation.  _

Let it be Aziraphale. You can take it, from Aziraphale.

_ Crowley pictured Aziraphale, his lovely softness, his sweet and open face. Nothing could ever compel Crowley to be anything but gentle with his beloved angel. He’d never be able to raise a hand to Aziraphale. No matter what. _

_ Crowley hung his head, letting his imagination take over, hating himself for it, wondering just how much Gabriel would be able to take from him before this was all over. _

_ “I...I can be good.” _

  


***

  


So he had done that. Had opened that door within himself and created that twisted vision to serve his own purposes. No wonder it was back, haunting him.

Crowley lay awake until morning, having given up on sleep but unwilling to worry Aziraphale. He feigned rising with the sunlight, rolling over into Aziraphale and mumbling something about breakfast. 

If Aziraphale was surprised by Crowley’s uncharacteristic early morning and excitement for pastries, he didn’t say anything. While the angel’s eggshell-gentle tiptoeing around Crowley’s shifting moods and desires was typically maddening, on this day Crowley was glad for it. 

They ate together downstairs, Crowley sipping slowly on his coffee so that Aziraphale was never truly eating alone. As the angel cleared his teacup and saucer, Crowley rose to join him, wrapping his hands around the angel’s hips.

“Fancy a cozy day in, do you?” Aziraphale’s voice held no teasing pressure. Just a simple, naked question.

“With you,” Crowley nuzzled into Aziraphale’s ear, “always.”

This was not at all true. Many days, Crowley was sullen and avoidant, distant and irritable.

But Aziraphale did not challenge the romantic white lie. Instead, he turned his head to kiss Crowley, batting his lashes. “Sounds delightful, dear.”

Perhaps that stupid dream was a good sign, he told himself. Old sins rising to the surface, like pus draining from a boil. He would steel himself, lance the infection, then pack the wound with happy memories like gauze. Sure, it might hurt, revisiting his past betrayals, but didn’t it always smart, treating a wound? He had inflicted it, after all. And he would not let it infect Aziraphale, would not let it grow to touch their future together.

He had done this, and he would fix this. 

They spent the day doing a whole pile of nothing together. Crowley was determined to make up for his subconscious forsaking of the angel the night before, but knew Aziraphale would grow concerned and anxious if he was too obvious about it. So he checked his more unctuous instincts, working instead to simply be present with Aziraphale.

It was a nice day, he had to concede, as they wound down for bed. Almost normal, even.

Crowley slept.

  


***

  


_ A door opening. A bell - the bookshop’s door. Someone standing in the doorway, lit from behind. Crowley squints. He can’t see. _

_ The smells of lavender and book bindings and shoe polish and sugar donuts. Who? _

_ Footsteps. Aziraphale’s shoes, but white. White shoes. Aziraphale’s white shoes. _

_ “Who’s there?” Crowley calls.  _

_ Arms around Crowley. Aziraphale. He falls into the angel, held in his embrace.  _

_ Angel hands, the soft pads of Aziraphale’s fingers, on his neck - a snap of cold metal - something pulling on his hair - Crowley going to his knees - Aziraphale’s voice - _

_ “Be good for me, sweet.” _

_ “No, no no no,” Crowley cries.  _

_ Aziraphale’s hands on his face, thumbs rubbing over Crowley’s eyelids, pushing them closed.  _

_ “You told  _ him _ no, I know,” the angel whispers. “But you always tell  _ me _ yes.”  _

_   
_

Crowley woke with a start, chest heaving. Aziraphale, who had been reading in a large chair next to the bed, looked up in alarm.

“Darling? Are you alright?”

Crowley could hardly bear to look at Aziraphale, fear and confusion still coursing through him. 

“Yeah. Fine. Just...a bad dream.” He clutched the blankets to himself, feeling exposed, sure that Aziraphale had somehow seen what he was dreaming.

Aziraphale put his book down, an ivory paper bookmark appearing to save his place, and joined Crowley in bed.

“I’m here now, love. Do you want to go back to sleep?”

Crowley didn’t, not really, but he didn’t exactly want to stay up and discuss it, either. He gave a small nod as Aziraphale curled up alongside him. 

“Okay. I’ll hold you, and you just try to sleep, alright?”

“Thanks, angel,” Crowley mumbled.

He closed his eyes, but he did not sleep.

_ You did that to him. Betrayed his memory. Let yourself think - let yourself pretend - that it was him. _

Crowley fought to control his breathing, wanting Aziraphale to be sure he was asleep. But his thoughts screamed at him.

_ How could you? He’d be so hurt if he knew that you think him capable of such things. That you dirtied him up in your mind just to make things easier on yourself. _

Crowley hated himself for the role he had forced Aziraphale to play, if only in his imagination. It was so unfair to the angel, who had never been anything but loving and trustworthy. 

_ I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, angel. _

  


***

  


_ Pain exploded through Crowley’s head as Gabriel slammed him against the wall with both hands around his neck, gripping his face. He winced as the archangel grabbed his jaw, squeezing, harder, harder, until he felt a sickening crack of bone.  _

_ The nerves in his teeth lit up like lightning and he screamed, a gurgled sound more pathetic than any he’d heard back in the pits of Hell. _

_ “I’m not happy with you, sweetheart.” Gabriel started to move his hands up, thumbs moving dangerously close to Crowley’s damaged eyes. _

_ No, no. Any touch to his eyes, to whatever had been left behind by the holy water, was agonizing. Intolerable.  _

_ His body told him so -  _ we cannot tolerate this, we simply cannot  _ \- and he started to thrash and struggle in Gabriel’s grip. _

_ “Still haven’t learned, have you?” Gabriel grazed one of Crowley’s lower eyelids with his nails, and Crowley howled. _

_ Then Crowley’s hands were on Gabriel’s arm, scrabbling, clawing, frantic pleas of a body pushed too far.  _

_ “Let go,” Gabriel hissed, his words heavy with threat. _

_ Crowley froze, his hands still wrapped around the archangel’s forearm, but no longer attempting to shove him off.  _

_ He remembered a torture - though that word had lost all meaning - that the humans used to use, back on earth. A man’s limbs all tied to different horses, pulled to his breaking point and then past.  _

_ A messy business. But quick, at least. _

_ He felt like such a man now, on the edge of tearing apart, stretched between his body’s desperate need for relief and his brain’s ragged understanding that resistance would only deepen the agony. _

_ “Get your fucking hands off me.” _

_ Gabriel could have wrenched Crowley’s hands off, could have broken them, could have ripped them off. But he wanted Crowley to do it himself. Wanted to beat down Crowley’s mind as well as his body. Crowley knew this.  _

_ The last thing Crowley wanted to do was give Gabriel what he wanted. _

_ The only thing Crowley could do was give Gabriel what he wanted. _

_ Again, Gabriel started to scratch lightly at Crowley’s eyes, and Crowley wailed. In an instant, his hands left Gabriel’s arm, intended now for the archangel’s face. Crowley wanted to plunge his fingers into the archangel’s eyes, wanted to tear them out of his face, wanted to make it all stop. _

_ Then his brain caught up with his flailing body, ordering it to stand down. Begging it to stand down. _

_ He had promised himself he wouldn’t do this again. But there was no time to negotiate. _

_ Crowley conjured within himself an image of Aziraphale’s face. His gentle blue eyes, the roundness of his cheeks.  _

_ He could never touch that face, not with anything but tender reverence. Not even his muscles and nerves, regressed to their most animal instincts, contained the ability to harm Aziraphale. _

_ Crowley dropped his arms, went limp and compliant. _

_ “That’s better.” Gabriel was close, nearly whispering in his ear. “You know better.”  _

_ Crowley tried to nod, making his broken jaw and cracked teeth light up again in agony. _

_ “I know you can be good for me.” _

_ Gabriel shoved his thumbs into Crowley’s eyes. The demon sobbed, pounding uselessly against his own thighs, restrained, controlled by his vicious imagining of Aziraphale as the creature doing this, Aziraphale the one his fists would find if he struck out.  _

  
  


***

  


“Shall we to bed?” Aziraphale was closing down the bookshop, turning off all the lights and fiddling with the thermostat. Apparently, the frequent presence of humans made such frivolities necessary. “You didn’t sleep well last night, it seemed.”

Crowley, despite his bone-deep exhaustion, put on a brightly confused face. “Actually, angel, I’m feeling pretty spry tonight. Why don’t we spend some time together, without all the pesky humans running in and out?”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow, but didn’t argue. Crowley knew that these days, Aziraphale was almost never willing to challenge him. Most of the time it bothered him - he wasn’t some fragile piece of antique china - but there were moments when he appreciated being able to get his way without any justification.

And this was one of them.

They posted up in the bedroom, lights on, and Crowley curled up in Aziraphale’s lap to listen to some Whitman being read aloud. Crowley ran his hand under Aziraphale’s pajama shirt and stroked the angel’s round belly.

This was perfect. It was exactly what he needed. To remind his stupid, obnoxious mind that this, here, this was the truth. That this was real, and nothing else was. That Aziraphale would never hurt him. That he was wrong, so wrong, for ever having the thought. 

Crowley turned his head to the side, kissing up Aziraphale’s body and slinking onto his hands and knees, knocking the book out of Aziraphale’s hands and eliciting a gentle laugh. “All done with poetry, then?”

“Mmhmm.” Crowley nibbled at Aziraphale’s neck, his hands roving, wanting to lose himself entirely in the angel’s softness, to forget everything that wasn’t right here, in front of him. 

It worked, through the night and into the morning, slow and tender cuddles punctuated by languorous sex. The next day found Crowley in a haze of sleepy happiness, and he didn’t do much besides drape himself over the furniture nearest Aziraphale and watch the angel as he puttered around the bookshop. They made one outing, to the little cart down the street to buy lemon-sugar ices, eaten with absurd flat wooden spoons that Crowley dimly remembered having taken credit for when the useless things were invented. 

Crowley was so proud of himself. He had drowned that nasty little thought, suffocated those memories, and now here he was, alive and safe. 

This was everything he had wanted, longed for, the fantasies that had sustained him during those long months. While he hid in the bed that was not his he pretended with every shred of his tattered imagination that he was  _ here _ . That he had  _ this _ . 

He had fought to return to this. He had survived for this. He had waited for this. His freedom was all for this. This: Aziraphale, the angel’s smiles and chatter, the sanctuary of the bookshop, his own body, pain free and fully his dominion, finally at rest. 

Rest. That was something he needed, after an entire sleepless night. He could simply miracle himself more energy, but Crowley had grown so accustomed to the rhythms of sleep, and after everything he had endured, he was loath to deny himself something he wanted so badly.

So when the sun went down, he stretched and yawned, making a big enough show of it that Aziraphale gave him a rather patronizing look over the rims of his reading glasses. 

“To bed with me, I think,” Crowley said, as if the idea had just occurred to him.

“Shall I join you?”

“No need, angel.” The casual confidence in his voice was real, for once. “You’re not done down here, and I just need to crash. Really.”

“Alright, dear. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Crowley took the stairs two at a time, expelling one last burst of energy, and flopped into bed, dispelling his clothes along the way. Out of habit more than anything, he reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the angelic light, tucking it under his chin. He fell asleep nearly instantly.

  


***

  


_ “I do feel it’s only fair, after all. He’s under my jurisdiction.” _

_ Aziraphale’s voice floats to Crowley through a haze of pain. He can taste the sound of the angel’s words, somehow, dry and sweet. _

_ “Let me take him.”  _

_ Gabriel’s voice comes from somewhere high above him, carrying down great wracking shuddering terror. _

_ “He is rightfully yours to punish.” _

_ Something sour in his mouth. A lemon candy, too harsh on his tongue. Crowley opens his mouth and the candy falls out, rolls toward a shoe-clad foot. Gabriel grinds it under his heel, crushing it into acidic dust, and the dust is in his eyes, stinging, and he is hungry, so hungry, wants nothing more than to lick the candy back into his mouth. _

_ The sound of a pen scratching on paper. Crowley can hear the shape of the letters. Aziraphale’s signature burns against the small of his back.  _

_ Aziraphale crouches down, puts the pen in Crowley’s hand, directs him to sign his name. Crowley signs. _

_ Aziraphale puts another sour candy in Crowley’s mouth. His eyes fill with tears and he spits the candy out. _

_ “No.” Aziraphale smacks Crowley, hard, across the face. “You’ll take what I give you.” He takes the pen and carves bloody lines into Crowley’s lips, his tongue. He presses another candy against the wounds. Crowley whimpers at the sting. _

_ “You want that,” Aziraphale said. “It’s good.”  _

_ Crowley nods. Sticky, lemon-sour blood drips to the floor. _

  
  


***

  


It was 3am. Aziraphale was still downstairs. The little light had rolled somewhere onto the floor. And Crowley was awake, having found himself tangled in the sheets. He threw off the sheets and sat up, seething.

He had only himself to blame for this. It was a fitting punishment, he figured. No one made him conjure Aziraphale into Gabriel’s place. No one made him twist and pervert the angel’s goodness in his mind. He alone had let his imagination create a terrifying hybrid of the being who tortured and enslaved him and the being who only ever loved him. 

How dare he. How dare he let any of Gabriel’s depravity touch Aziraphale. How dare he give up his memories of the angel so cheaply. So selfishly. 

Crowley growled through gritted teeth and stood up. He paced, padding as soft as possible over the floor, knowing Aziraphale would come attend to him if he knew Crowley was awake. 

And what would he say? Would he be vague, claim it was just another nightmare? Then he’d see the disappointment in Aziraphale’s eyes, just a flicker. The angel wanted to know. Didn’t like being shut out from Crowley’s pain.

He had been trying to let Aziraphale in more, these days. Not because he got any relief from sharing the details of his suffering, but because it seemed a necessary bridge between him and the angel. Aziraphale was right in his insistence that he couldn’t tend to a wound he didn’t know was there.

But how could Crowley tell him this? That he’d used Aziraphale so cruelly, that he’d turned the angel into an abomination in his own mind? That he’d credited some of Gabriel’s worst actions to Aziraphale?

Aziraphale would try to console him, saying it was just about survival, that Crowley had only done what he needed to do to make it through, to make it out and back home with him.

Crowley knew better.

  


***

  


_ Crowley lay curled under the bedsheets, head burrowed into the pillow. He did not sleep, but drifted in a numb blankness. When Gabriel left him alone for long enough, he could find his way to this place, where he no longer thought of the sigil carved into his flesh, of the crushing length of eternity spread before him. He thought of nothing. He was nothing. _

_ No fantasies of rescue, no soothing memories of Aziraphale, no plans for vengeance upon the archangel, no stray thoughts of escape. Just a deadened emptiness which passed for relief given the alternatives. _

_ When Gabriel opened the door, Crowley started to slide onto the floor, but Gabriel spoke. He sounded cheerful, as if his pleasant mood meant anything to his captive slave. _

_ “You can stay there, sweetheart.” _

_ Crowley lay still, watching Gabriel’s feet approach. The archangel grabbed the blankets and yanked them off, leaving Crowley exposed, chilled. He climbed onto the bed and smacked Crowley’s hip. _

_ “Get that ass up for me,” he said, his tone still friendly.  _

_ Crowley shifted into position, on his knees, his face still flat on the pillow until Gabriel pulled it out from under him, dropping his head onto the mattress. _

_ “There we go.” Crowley felt Gabriel begin to push his way into him with a satisfied noise. _

_ Crowley tried to return to the place he had been before, where nothing mattered and no pain could penetrate the fog of oblivion he had become. _

_ It did not work. _

_ “You just gonna lay there?” Gabriel slapped him again, and Crowley groaned. So it would be one of those days. _

_ Something occurred to him, then. A thought he had not had for a very long time. Certainly not since Gabriel restored his sight and put him in this new cell.  _

Aziraphale. You can pretend it’s Aziraphale.

_ He didn’t want to. It felt wrong, somehow. Unfair. Unfaithful. _

It doesn’t matter,  _ his mind helpfully informed him. _ You’ll never see him again. He’s gone. He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t care what you do.

_ It did seem absurd, thinking about it, that anything he did here could ever matter to Aziraphale. Could have anything to do with him. _

Just make it easier.

_ Crowley squeezed his eyes shut, straining back into his memories for something he could use. They had done this, hadn’t they? Well, not this. But something like this. Aziraphale had touched him. Held him. They had made love. _

_ Hadn’t they? Crowley found it hard to believe. But no, he knew well enough what he had spent so long denying.  _

_ Finally, he cobbled together something. Aziraphale’s hands, smaller than Gabriel’s, just as strong but never cruel. He silenced Gabriel’s crude grunting in his mind, replaced it with Aziraphale’s sing-song breathing.  _

_ Gabriel put a hand on Crowley’s shoulder - not to hurt, not to force, just for want of a place to rest his hand - and the unexpected gentleness of the action, combined with the force of his imagination, made Crowley sigh. _

_ “Yeah? You like that?” Gabriel continued to thrust. “Come on, show me.” _

It’s Aziraphale. Aziraphale. He’s touching you again, after all this time.

_ Crowley succumbed to the fantasy, started to move with Gabriel. This pleased the archangel.  _

_ “There you go, you little demon whore.”  _

_ Knowing he had to do something to drown out Gabriel’s voice, Crowley started to moan and whine.  _

_ Gabriel liked that.  _

_ Crowley wrapped his arms around his head, covering his ears, and tried to ignore the increasing roughness, the humiliation of Gabriel’s taunts. _

_ Then Gabriel’s hand was on his cock, and there was no help for him. He was half hard already with the thoughts of Aziraphale, and Gabriel coaxed him further, mistaking Crowley’s keening cries for enjoyment. _

_ Crowley came in one terrible trembling moment, Gabriel still inside him, cold shame hardening in him like an overnight frost. _

_ He bit his lip, burying his face in the sheets, worried he might speak the angel’s name. He wanted to say it, to scream it, then cut out his own tongue so he could never say anything else. He would swallow his own blood and know that the last word ever on his lips was  _ Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale.

_ Gabriel finished and pulled out, petted Crowley’s back where his name was seared, then stood and cleaned himself up with a snap, not bothering to dry the bed where Crowley had spent.  _

_ “That was good,” Gabriel said. “We should do that more often.”  _

  


***

  


Crowley paced and fidgeted through the night, unable to get back into bed, unwilling to go downstairs and let Aziraphale know he wasn’t sleeping. He tried to find something quiet to do in the bedroom, and found himself tidying the top of the dresser dozens of times, moving Aziraphale’s ceramic dish of collar stays a fraction of an inch, then moving it back, over and over.

The dish rested on a little doily, and he thought he might shake the dust out of it, but when he lifted the dish and touched the lace underneath, it was pristine. He swore in frustration. Was there nothing,  _ nothing _ , to be done?

Hours upon hours later, the sun finally saw fit to rise. Crowley dressed and went downstairs to fix himself some coffee. Someone knew, he’d need plenty to make it through the day.

“Morning, dear,” Aziraphale said. “Did you have a good night’s sleep?”

Crowley flinched, defensive. It felt sometimes like the angel could see right through him, like trying to hide things from Aziraphale only added to his transgressions.

“Slept fine,” he muttered, then ducked into the kitchen.

A cup of coffee calmed him down enough to actually savor his second one. Crowley splashed some cold water under his eyes and expended a miracle on perking himself up before sitting down at the breakfast nook.

It still felt odd, using his powers, and he especially hated to use them to change his state of mind. But it worked well enough.

Aziraphale wandered into the kitchen and started to make himself some tea. He was quietly companionable, waiting for Crowley to speak. For a while Crowley said nothing, until a question occurred to him, and Aziraphale’s gentle patience made it possible to voice.

“Was there ever a time,” Crowley started, tracing one finger around the rim of his coffee mug, “when I was - when I was gone, was there ever a time that you thought, maybe, I wasn’t coming back?”

Aziraphale, to his credit, only looked up from his tea with a tiny startle, then smoothed his demeanor as if they were having a simple conversation about where to have lunch that day. “Well,” he started, “if I’m being honest, no. Not while you were gone.”

“Really?” Crowley didn’t think any answer would have soothed him. He was regretting having asked. But he couldn’t just drop the subject now.

“Remember, love,” Aziraphale said, “to my mind, you were only missing for a matter of weeks. I was quite anxious to locate you, of course, and I did become frustrated by your absence from both Hell and Earth. But I never despaired of finding you.”

“You never gave up on me,” Crowley mumbled into his coffee.

“No.” Aziraphale’s tone was cautious now. “Why do you ask, dear?”

“Just wondering.” Crowley knew his terse deflection was entirely unconvincing.

“Of course, I must admit that there were times after we reunited that I worried about you ever being free from - er, from everything.” Aziraphale fumbled a bit, still unwilling to say Gabriel’s name. “And, well, you know that my desperation to find you led me down some...sinful paths.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat awkwardly, then took an extended sip of his tea.

“Right…” Crowley wanted to free Aziraphale from the mess of this conversation. The angel was clearly casting about for the right thing to say that would comfort Crowley, and Crowley hated to see him so flustered and uncomfortable. “Okay. Thanks.”

“Is there something you wanted to talk about?”

“Nah.” Crowley finished his coffee, then swirled around the remaining dregs, watching them spiral in the bottom of his mug. “Just wondering.”

Aziraphale stood at the sink and looked out the window, two hands cupped around his tea. “It would have been entirely understandable, however, if I had. I was certainly in a lot of pain and distress. I’d done everything I could manage, with no success. I’m certain there were some moments when I did lose all hope.”

“Oh.” Crowley had no idea where to go from here. Aziraphale seemed to have taken control of the conversation and begun to answer questions Crowley hadn’t even asked. Not out loud, at least. 

“And I do believe I must forgive myself, if even those moments of hopelessness call for forgiveness. I don’t think they were moments of weakness. Only truth. For me, at that time, to believe that you were gone from me forever, it was all I knew. And I can’t be blamed for simply seeing what was there in front of me. Even if I was short-sighted by my own sadness.”

“It’s alright, angel,” Crowley said, standing up to join Aziraphale at the sink.

“It is, isn’t it,” Aziraphale said softly, setting his teacup down so he could wrap his hands around Crowley’s. “It’s alright, now. And whatever we feared, whatever we knew, whatever we saw, in those dark times - I can only feel sorrow for ourselves at those times, when we couldn’t see this future to come.”

Crowley buried his face in Aziraphale’s neck, the softness of his hair. He wasn’t sure just what conclusion he had been trying to reach with this abortive conversation, but he felt better. He always felt better, after bringing his wounds, even in his oblique way, to Aziraphale. Sometimes it irritated Crowley just how sweet and loving his angel was, how expertly he handled Crowley’s moods. Other times, it was exactly what Crowley needed.

Aziraphale was perfect.

So perfect.

He’d never do anything to hurt Crowley.

Crowley wiped that chastising thought out of his mind by doing the washing-up while Aziraphale puttered off to his study. Eventually, Crowley joined him, curled up on the cozy chair next to the angel’s desk. 

“Would you like to get up to something, dear?” Aziraphale asked, looking up from his work.

“Nah,” Crowley shrugged, and he really meant it. He was, despite his multiple cups of coffee and self-directed miracles, exhausted. Happy enough to sit in the warm company of his angel, Crowley rested his chin on his hand and watched Aziraphale flip through the pages of an ancient manuscript. He decided not to interrogate his relief at the absence of a pen in Aziraphale’s hand.   
  


***

  


_ A church, high arched ceilings, echoing with holiness. Aziraphale leads him in, to the font of holy water. Crowley’s nostrils burn with the smell. _

_ “We’re in a church,” Aziraphale says. “Kneel.” _

_ Crowley sinks to the floor. When his knees hit the flat stone and start to burn, he realizes he is nude.  _

_ “Aziraphale, what-”  _

_ Aziraphale silences him with a hand on his shoulder, pushing. “Down.” The angel forces him into a familiar position, pressed to the floor, pain raging across his skin as he is forced against the consecrated ground. _

_ Now Aziraphale stands in front of him, next to the font of blessed water. He holds a tartan-patterned thermos. Crowley watches from the edge of one eye as Aziraphale sinks the thermos into the font, hears the soft burbling of the water as it fills the vessel. _

_ Crowley tenses, shivers, holds himself still. _

_ Aziraphale holds the thermos over him, tilts it, pours a steady trickle of the water over Crowley’s hunched body. _

_ His nails scrabble against the stone floor as searing agony splashes over him. _

_ “I thought you wanted this,” Aziraphale says, sounding genuinely confused by Crowley’s reaction. _

_ The demon’s anguished cries fill the cavernous church. _

_ “You asked me for it.” Aziraphale says it like a question. _

_ Crowley has no answer. Above him, Christ’s crown of thorns becomes a ring of smooth, gleaming silver. _

  


_ *** _

  


Crowley woke to Aziraphale’s face, looming above him, his gaze intense. 

“Crowley? Crowley, I’m here. You’re having a nightmare.”

Crowley looked around, fitful and frantic. A pen sat behind the angel’s ear. On the desk beside him, a neat stack of bright white, crisp-cornered pages.

Aziraphale’s hands were on him, tight, holding, claiming.

“I’ve got you now. It’s alright.”

_ I’ve got you. _

_ You’re mine now. _

Something like panic, spiked through with rage, seized in Crowley’s chest. 

Images crashed together in his mind’s eye.

Cold blue eyes. Aziraphale’s hand on the slim silver remote. Signed paperwork. The collar’s dial under Aziraphale’s fingers. Pain. The angel’s voice.

Some were memories. Others were something else, more slippery, strange and warped. The edges between them blurred, and the dreams became real, the memories became predictions, the calloused fingers of his imagination pressing them together like a potter with crumbling clay.

“Crowley? What are you doing?”

There was heavy wood under his palms, and Crowley realized he was standing at Aziraphale’s desk, tossing aside page after page of meaningless text, searching for something.

_ Where was it? Was it still here? _

Crowley yanked a drawer out of the desk and dumped its contents on the floor, spreading them around with his foot, searching. 

“Crowley, don’t! That’s - that’s mine.”

_ Mine. Mine. Mine. _

“Where is it?” Crowley heard himself shouting as he frantically pawed through another drawer. “It’s here, it’s here, it can’t be here.”

“What, Crowley? What are you looking for?” Aziraphale had come closer now, but made no move to stop Crowley on his rampage through the bookshop’s office. “Crowley, please, stop this!”

_ Stop. Stop. Stop. Fucking. Fighting. _

Crowley’s vision was blank with rage. He tore through bookshelves, desperately searching. 

“Did you keep it? Do you have it?” Crowley couldn’t have heard the answer even if Aziraphale said something. 

_ That’s why. That’s why this is happening. Not because you sold him out. Because he bought you. He kept it. He still owns you. And you know that. That’s where the dreams are coming from. It’s his fault. _

_ If you can find the contract here, if he kept it, then it’s his fault. _

_ It has to be here. _

But it wasn’t there. Crowley turned the entire office upside down, examined every sheet of paper in Aziraphale’s study. It wasn’t there.

Which meant Crowley was the villain still. The source of these dreams was the rankness of his own mind, and nothing else. 

“Where is it?” Crowley pointed violently at Aziraphale. “What have you done with it?”

Aziraphale raised his hands like a hostage, tears swimming in his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean, Crowley. Can you tell me what you’re looking for?”

The pain on Aziraphale’s face was too much. Crowley retreated further into his rage. “The contract. With Gabriel! That you signed!”

Aziraphale winced at the archangel’s name. “I don’t have it, Crowley,” he said quietly. “It was destroyed. Along with the collar, and...and everything. It’s gone.”

“Gone?” Crowley felt the last bits of energy that had been fueling his tantrum drain out of him. “It’s gone?”

“Yes, Crowley.” 

They looked at each other across the wreckage of the room for a long, long minute. Aziraphale said nothing, made no comforting move toward Crowley. Neither did he leave. He stood, looking far more solid than Crowley felt, waiting. 

Then Crowley, having no more strength in him, collapsed. Papers crumpled beneath him as he fell, sobbing, to the floor. 

Aziraphale was beside him in an instant. 

Crowley cried so hard he felt like an old clay vessel, cracked and crumbling. But every time he lifted his head and saw the mess he had made of Aziraphale’s office, he fell back down into tears.

“I’m sorry,” Crowley whimpered. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Aziraphale said, rising to pull Crowley off the floor. He went along, limply, hating every step that crushed more books and papers under his feet. Soon they were in the living room, next to each other on the sofa. Aziraphale peered at him with anxious concern.

“I’m sorry,” Crowley mumbled again. “I’ll put it all back to rights.”

“We can worry about my study later,” Aziraphale said, wrapping an arm around Crowley. 

Crowley nodded, wiping his eyes. 

“Why did you think that contract was somewhere in my office? And why were you looking for it?”

Crowley shrugged. The effort it would take to put words to his answer seemed far too great.

“Please, Crowley.” Aziraphale sounded tired and lost in a way that broke Crowley’s heart. 

He couldn’t keep doing this to the angel.

It wasn’t fair.

Crowley took a deep, rattling breath and adjusted his position on the couch, still not meeting Aziraphale’s eyes.

“I’ve been having...dreams.”

Aziraphale nodded and made an encouraging noise. 

“Bad dreams.”

“Yes, so it seemed.”

A pause stretched between them, as Crowley hoped vainly that this would be enough of an explanation to satisfy Aziraphale and put this to rest

Of course, it wasn’t.

“Dreams about what, dear?”

Crowley ran his hands over his face. “Dreams about you.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said.

“Dreams about...about you hurting me,” Crowley said into his hands.

“I see.” 

Another span of quiet. Then Aziraphale continued. “That sounds very distressing.”

Crowley couldn’t stand the compassion in Aziraphale’s voice. He couldn’t play the victim anymore. “I’m having them now because,” he blurted, “because - because I thought about it. A lot. I pictured it, and imagined it, and now, it’s there, in my mind, and I can’t get rid of it, and I can’t undo it, and I’m sorry, angel, I’m so sorry.”

Aziraphale made gentle circles on Crowley’s back as he dissolved into tears, but Crowley could tell the angel’s quiet was not patient waiting, but contemplating.

“‘m sorry,” Crowley said again, once he had calmed.

“Do you know why you had these thoughts?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “I do.”

“Can you tell me?”

“It was...I wasn’t supposed to fight back. But it was too hard, sometimes. So I told myself it was you. I never wanted to hit you. I couldn’t, so...I pretended it was you.”

Crowley did not miss the sharp change in Aziraphale’s breathing. “You imagined, when Gabriel was torturing you, that it was me?”

Crowley nodded, eyes shut tight with shame. “Not all the time, just when - I mean, just sometimes. If I needed to. I’m sorry, Aziraphale, I’m so sorry - I shouldn’t have ever, I’m sorry.”

Aziraphale hummed a little as he considered this. Crowley braced for recrimination, for horror, for betrayal.

Instead, Aziraphale asked, “Did it help?”

“What?”

“Did it help,” Aziraphale repeated, sounding alarmingly casual. “Thinking it was me. Did it make things easier?”

Crowley thought it over. It certainly made him feel worse, after; made him hate himself for tarnishing his precious memories of Aziraphale so he could better obey Gabriel. But he had to admit that the strategy served its purpose, in helping him avoid further, deeper suffering at the archangel’s hands.

_ Of course it worked. Otherwise you wouldn’t have kept doing it. _

“Yeah,” Crowley said, his head hanging. “It did.”

“Well then,” Aziraphale said. “I’m happy to have been a balm, in whatever odd way.”

“No!” Crowley stood from the couch and threw his arms out in a frustrated gesture. “No, you can’t just - it’s not okay! What I did to you, that I let myself - it’s not fair. You know it’s not right!”

Aziraphale watched the display of emotion without showing any himself. “I do admit, I find the idea of me being a party to your captivity, if only in your mind, quite distasteful.”

Crowley could almost laugh at the euphemistic understatement. But it felt good to hear the angel say it. Distasteful, indeed.

“But I don’t feel wronged, not in any way. I feel honored, that your love for me was strong enough to help you endure. I feel pride, and great sadness, that you endured so much.”

“It wasn’t fair to you,” Crowley said. “I shouldn’t have.”

“Oh, Crowley.” Aziraphale held his arms out, inviting Crowley back onto the couch with him, and Crowley went, curling up in the angel’s lap. “The injustice was done by Heaven, not by you. It was unfair that you were forced to suppress your own reactions. It was unfair that you had to trade away your good memories for your own survival.” Aziraphale stroked Crowley’s hair, and the demon slowly felt himself relax. “I would never, could never, find fault with you for anything you had to do to get through. To make it home to me.”

“I thought it was over,” Crowley said. “I thought I’d never have to - to think of you like that, ever again. But these dreams…” He rubbed his fists against his eyes. 

“It’s alright,” Aziraphale soothed. 

“It felt like…” Crowley couldn’t stop the words from coming now, now that he was safe, and relaxed, and that this stream had begun to flow. “Like punishment. For doing that to you. Like I was being haunted, like I had made some monster of you and now it lives in my mind, forever. And I couldn’t get it to leave.”

“That’s why you haven’t wanted to sleep,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley nodded against the angel’s leg.

“And what was that about,” Aziraphale said gently, “in my office?”

Crowley curled up in a tight ball, but he did not leave Aziraphale’s embrace. “I don’t know. I thought, maybe, somehow, if the contract was still here, if you still owned me, maybe that was why. Why I still felt…” Crowley trailed off, painfully aware of how stupid he sounded.

“Crowley, I never owned you.” Aziraphale’s voice was firm, but not raised. “The presence of the contract doesn’t change that.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, unable to muster anything more convincing.

Aziraphale sighed and continued tracing delicate swirls over Crowley’s tense body. “Of course you’re having dreams, and memories. What happened to you - it was real. And enormous. The fact that you still face psychological repercussions doesn’t mean you deserve to still be in pain. It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. You’re not haunted, darling, you’re...healing.”

Crowley relaxed into the touch. He knew that tomorrow, he’d need to face the disaster in Aziraphale’s study. He’d need to talk more with Aziraphale, answer the angel’s questions. He’d need to find a way to continue, despite it all.

But for now, resting in Aziraphale’s arms, comforted by the angel’s real and sturdy presence beside him, Crowley slept.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Younger" by The Mountain Goats.
> 
> _Set the torch aflame  
>  Call the night by name  
> Stake out your dark position  
> Lie in wait  
> By the gleaming city gate  
> Try not to lose sight of the mission  
> It never hurts to give thanks to the broken bones  
> You had to use to build your ladder_


End file.
